﻿"Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead."﻿-Benjamin Franklin

Truth﻿mahaila smith﻿

We did not know How much we couldHurt each other. I hurt you first. Sorry, Not.

Your lies stabbed me In the back, My secrets Burned you like acid. Ready for another?

I never liked you that much anyway.

TALIA VOGT

WOrds of wisdom from the stallsmarie benedek

*This piece is entirely composed of phrases that were found in bathroom stalls. Secrets, if you will.*

This way to the ministry of magic, but beware of the limbo dancers. Oh, and by the way, you’re beautiful. And before I forget—congrats on not being pregnant!

Did you know that, technically, the taste of broccoli does not influence the taste of chocolate? But a word of advice: don’t eat chocolate all day. If you do, you’ll soon be sick of it.

You should try to stay positive.

Who am I? An optimist, which leads me to my next point: everyone should really be nicer to each other. I mean, why can’t we just all get along?

Who the hell am I? Not a pessimist, and I just want you to know that it only takes twenty seconds of bravery to get what you want, and even though you’ll always be haunted by the idea that you’re wasting your life, it won’t be enough to keep you from living.

So get your shit together. I mean, it’s just high school.

Don’t cry. I've been there.

You’ll make it.

the ants have secretly been plotting:kelsey nowlan

We, the ants, have had enough. You have smacked us with your last newspaper, destroyed your last ant hill, laid your last trap. For years now, we have secretly been plotting to unite as one. Every time you heard your name being called, and thought it was the wind, that was us. The sensation of tiny legs crawling up the length of your arm was not your mind playing tricks on you. It was us. We are everywhere and it is no use trying to hide.

This should not surprise you. Did you really think you could get away with treating us poorly for so long? Were you under the assumption that we were fine with you teasing us with your delicious picnic snacks only to flick us away? Are you aware that we have a queen to feed? Surely you would not like it if we came in and swiped your turkey right from under your noses at thanksgiving.Any attempts at reconciliation will be futile. The ant revolution is officially underway. You should consider yourselves warned. We will take over your grocery stores, your farmer’s markets, your bakeries. Bid farewell to the Dorito crumbs you eat when you are desperate. They are now ours. Every crumb. Every morsel of food. It is ours from now on.

We will no longer be seen as a joke. The ants will at last be seen for what we truly are, a force to be reckoned with.

"BURIED TREASURE, HIDDEN FOREVER"
BY SARAH COLLINS

The secret keepersonia Gill

Strangers are the best secret-keepers.When a heavy burden weighs you to the ground,unload your woes on a stranger you foundin the street; you are sure to feel poundslighter. Perhaps whisper your crime to the womanbeside you on a one-way flight,and watch as her eyes widen,and her fingers tighten around the armrestSpill your secrets to the homeless mansitting on the bench beside you,as he blinks and says“Do you have a cigarette?”Tell the little girl sitting beside you on OC Transpo,about the time you accidentally killedyour pet hamster when you were her age,and she’ll tell you about when Mommyaccidentally hurt Daddy during an while they argued.Okay, maybe some things are better left unsaid;just write in your diary next time.

keeping youarifah baksh

I needed to tell somebody,so I did.Then I waited for a reaction.Nothing happened.

I told someone else. No reaction.

Maybe I was a boreor maybe no one really cared.I wanted them to know.The more people I told,the more said it was old news

The suitcasejessica wilson

Every night I pack my shiny red suitcase. I make sure that my jar of coins and my toothbrush are inside and then I walk up the stairs. I try to not drop my shiny red suitcase as I go up the beige carpeted stairs. I put on my too-big boots and open the door and take a few steps before he grabs me and pulls me back in. Every night he says, “Why do you try to run away? I love you, sweetie.” Then he takes me back down to my room with the shiny red suitcase thumping down the beige carpeted steps behind him.

There are no secretsaeriana narbonne

Downtown is made up of one street. Black lines try to cover up the cracks, like the city worker’s attempt to cover up the city’s lack of money with his patch work job. On a summer’s day, sometime in our younger years, the air was thick and the sun was bright. Although we wore sun glasses and covered our eyes with our hands (just like the explorers), it was painful for us to look up when the plane flew by. “Where do you think it’s going?” I asked my friend. She shrugged, unconcerned. “Someone knows. Nothing can be a secret from everybody.” I knew she was right. She knew about secrets; her mother kept many the year before. It was nearly impossible for anyone to keep a secret in that apartment; they all escaped. That night I slept over at her house. It was always an adventure to go through her apartment, cluttered with souvenirs from a time she knew she would not revisit anytime soon. We looked up into the darkening sky, remembering the airplane that had flown by, and wondered where it went.

Émilie Montreuil Strub

He told me the truth.A truth I understood, a truth I might have known a long time and just not realized it. A truth that hurt all the same.

untiltedclaire hendrickson-jones

all the words wearen’t saying dripbetween us likemolasses slowing theflow of our conversation to a standstill.

all the things i don’t have the courage to say and all the things you think i couldn’t forgive and the thickest of all the realization (known but never spoken) that we are not what we once were.i begin to wonder if there’s something wrong with me or if the problem is simply that time has eroded our edges and we are two puzzle pieces that fit together no longer.

Light on the exclamation points please.My fingers are still jittery, wrists still seizingfrom ripping covers off old books too expensiveto send home. Cry a bit for these books then keep tearing.

$10.25 an hour cannot stretch far enough to cover all my bases. I know three strikes and I’m outdown for the count and days like these seem so muchlonger than just dawn till dusk.

and it repeatsand it repeats

And in this way I pass five months, coughing up the dustof new age and non-fiction and the historyof all things.

ARCHANA RAGUPARAN

"SECRET GARDEN" BY SAVANNAH CRAIG

winkedanonymous

Muscles, brawn and dirty blonde hair all spiked up in the frontSport jerseys and jackets, football teams and baseball cleatsMr. Popular, the typical jock

“I bet you get all the girls”, I said, jokingly, after baseball practice

He just laughed and winkedLaughed real hardAnd maybe it was just a little more than a wink

mommy and daddymeg collins

In my house, secrets crawled up walls like spiders. No one spoke about what they did, or what they still do. Mommy and Daddy tucked me into my bed and didn’t face each other in their own. Mommy and Daddy only talked when there was a fight to be had, or something wrong with me. I tried to make things go wrong a lot, so that Mommy and Daddy would talk. When Daddy got into his car and went to the gym, I got sad. And when Daddy got home with lipstick stains on his face, I had to promise not to tell Mommy.

MAB SPEELMAN

buried aliveisabelle flack

She wanted to take her secrets to the grave.Let them lurk six feet under, away from the light.Where the voices, taunting, maiming, and hauntingWould cease battle and surrender to strife.﻿She knew the earth could imprison her secrets.That once buried, nothing returns to the day.Where darkness and death pave a path into hell,Where time itself waits and decays.

Her secrets fought back, unwilling to die,Refusing restraint by her ultimate demise.For if secrets can’t escape through whispers and wait,Then they’re chained to the soul they had prized.

chainsMareim Salman

What creates enemies are those whispers heard in hallways Those malicious words that ruin lives.It all starts with one thingThat leads to another The pinky promises And crossing your heartA vow that if you speak a single wordYou’ll hope to die.It's a chain of secrets, you see,Maybe death would be the next best thing.

The Man Who Died in AntiguaTyrin Kelly

He kept himself in his villa in Antigua. He would send invitations for visits to see his polished floors, oiled gates and in-house-garden by the living room. Thick bellied men of wealth who chuckle deeply, drunken lovers who clink glasses before a drink, dancers who trample barefoot in the garden, and musicians who play the lute and viola for amusement in the courtyard would make their way through his doors.

The staircase to the rooftop view of heaven was made of rock, and once at the summit there was an outlook onto the cheerful neighbourhood where the streets were paved with cobblestone. The upper floor was dirty, strewn with imperfection. And whilst seated at the dinner table over brunch, he had a conversation with a fellow comrade in a foreign language of his hallucinogenic wayfaring after digesting ayahuasca. He spoke of his spiritual intimacy with the brewed plant infusion; descriptions of him hunched over under the shelter of a cool cove where the walls sweat as he boiled the mixture in the company of a shaman.

In the backyard, he kept a greenhouse of exotic plants picked from Eden. As he entered, the humidity cascaded over him. His breath grew heavy as if imprisoned in a blanket fort in the midst of the Sahara, propped up by tree limbs. There, he nurtured his greenery with gifts of fruition and spoken kindness. Cacti that had been growing for close to a decade, carnivorous plants, and bloomed flowers that danced in the breeze grew beneath the shelter of the greenhouse. Many of them kept secrets of the man. His planted greenery knew things no man should ever want to be known. They soon whispered his secrets into the heated breeze of the distant night, giving the man the gift of shame and sadness. The next day, he locked his doors and sought a shaman, seeking to purge his sins. And during his ayahuasca travels, the man died in the glimpse of a morose dream, shedding lustrous tears, and was laid to rest among his potted plants on the roof of his villa.

"SOCIETY'S SECRET" BY KASSANDRA BYERS

TRAPEZE artistsemma rektor

Sharing a secret is a leap of faith.Keeping a secret is hanging suspended in the air, and trusting your confidant to not cut the ropes holding you aloft.Over two years I made a puzzle; each piece was a snippet of information. It did not result in a full picture, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that the puzzle was a combined effort. Three people in total shared the things we did. Looking back, our grand and convoluted story, crafted from secrets, was not nearly as important or interesting as we thought. Yet, it retained its relevancy for much longer than any of us expected. The secret became a test when a fourth person approached the cliff we had already leapt from. A test for the secret holders: We each held ownership to one part of the secret. Who would be the one to start giving away pieces? The temptation pulled at me. A test for the fourth: Curiosity battled respect for privacy. Would he collect the pieces and build the puzzle for himself?In the end, we all passed. We still hang suspended in the air. He still stands, firmly planted on the ground. We will stay that way until the picture on the puzzle fades, bleached by time, until the secret is no longer a secret because we will have forgotten.

you used to watch her sleeplistening to the soft sighs of her breathing but now you lie alonetrapped between cold sheets

you dream of her big teeththe way your necks fit togetherand the freckles on her backwhich made a path for your fingers

you’ve been feeling small insidespending your eveningssitting lonely and sighingon a seedy couch made for two

honestlyMaCayla Nesbitt-Batten

“I just hope that one day- preferably when we're both blind drunk- we can talk about it."- J.D. Salinger

I hope you either disappoint, or we become great friends.For being in the midst of this attraction makes me feel sick and weak, impulsive and aware.

One day you'll be just a name and a side smile on my face, or a bad joke and a sad story. And so, I just want this to end, for the story to unravel and for me to be once again safe, sitting on the coast line watching your ship sail away.

UntitledKimiya Aghazadeh

There is so much that I have kept from you. There is so much that I want to say to you (I have a galaxy of words waiting).But every time I see you, I just go cold. I can't speak. I can't breathe. And I am sorry.Please, talk to me

Skeletons in the closeterin jackson

Why do you wish to see the Skeletons in my closet?They’re hideous, really;Fractured and not presentable.I hear them banging against the doors every night,Rattling their fingers in the tight spaces between ribs;Their bare limbs are darker than I thought they’d be.These skeletons lack brains yet they possess desire.They want out.If I let them out though, they’ll shove me inside the closet.They’ll steal my clothes and my house and my children.You see, I put them in there when they were uglyBut now they’re absolutely revolting.

ERIN JACKSON

the secret to happinessnatasha laycock

Happiness is not hidden, nor protected. Happiness is small. Happiness is simple. Happiness is the top part of muffins, and the chocolate found at the bottom of Drumsticks. Happiness is coming home after a hard day to find that mom made cookies, or waking up to the aroma of cinnamon buns. It’s that feeling you get when a stoplight turns green as you approach it, and a neighbour waving when you pass. A compliment on a project you put hours of work into, and the euphoria of receiving a 97.

Happiness comes from soft ducklings, Saturday nights curled up in bed with a good book and a thundershower, or when your favourite song plays on the radio (and you know the lyrics), when the teachers announces that quiz you bombed won’t count, and when you bathe with as many salts and candles as you damn well please.

Happiness is when you go home homework free. Happiness is when you slip into your pajamas at six o’clock. Happiness is when you favourite fictional couple finally kiss.

Indulge, appreciate, and take part in these. After all, the only secret to happiness is that there is no secret.

secretskrista hum

“It’s a secret.”That’s what my sister would tell me when I asked questions.Who was on the phone?Where are you going?Who gave you that?Why are you sneaking out?Why aren’t you ever around anymore?Why did you come back?Was it not good enough? It was always a secret. The day she stopped keeping secrets was the day I stopped asking questions.

cricket songscassia pelton

He lives with houseplants on dusty shelves, listens to the radio and eats chocolate pudding.He can’t bend down to wipe the shoe prints off the floor anymorebut he likes to look at them.The small ones were hers.In the evening, he sits on the back porch and sings to the cricketsbecause they stopped singing to him.And sometimes he swears the house is full again-full of kids and dogs and homemade birthday cakesAnd her voice, reading at book club,never pausing unless she caught him listening in,then she’d smile and the ladies would giggle.He could listen to her read all day.The book club ladies come by with shortbread sometimes,but they don’t act like they used toAnd each visit seems shorter than the last.He can't remember the last time they came.His mind feels foggy,like the early mornings in Septemberwhen he has to squint to see the garden she planted in the yard-violets, sunflowers, chives.Sometimeshe has to remind himself of how others see him-nothing more than a frail, old man living off of memories.Memoriesof shoe prints, birthday cakes, and cricket songs.He’s forgottenthe differencebetween memories and imagination.People say,“It’s okay to be confused.”But the cricket songs are real to himand so was Gracie Lou.

the secret life of the thing under your bedRowan o'brien

He knows your breathing patterns like old people know bird calls. He even has names for each of them.

When you wake up in the morning feeling particularly relaxed, it is most likely because he gave you one of his famous Swedish massages while you were asleep. You’re welcome.

He carved his name into your bed frame. Don’t bother looking. You won’t be able to find it.

On nights when he’s bored, he likes to move everything in your room exactly 0.46 centimeters to the left.

He ate the last cookie.

He adopted the stuffed dog you thought you lost as his own. It is the only thing with which he feels he has a personal connection - besides you, of course.

He likes to watch you sleep because you look more peaceful that way.

When you look under your bed, perhaps searching for a missing sock or misplaced science assignment, he stares into your eyes, but as usual, you do not see him.

He dreams of becoming a famous jazz musician, who plays the alto saxophone on New York subways, and lives off forgotten Starbucks and the generosity of strangers.

Contrary to your beliefs, your bed does not creak. The sounds you hear are actually his sobs when he recalls the time you referred to him as the “monster” under the bed.

Oh, hello there. You caught us by surprise. Let us introduce ourselves.

We are the Secret Spotlight Society. We may not be the Skulls & Bones or the Illuminati, however we do claim such notable alumni as Nicholas Cage's dog and three of the four Beatles (we cannot disclose which members were part of the Society). The Heads of our Society (or "editors" as you young ones might call them) are Claire Hendrickson-JaJaJones, Kelsey Rightnowlan, Sonia Guillotine, Emma Rektoraus and Rowan Bro'Broen.

We would like to thank everyone who donated their souls - ahem, I mean pieces - to our Spotlight, as well as Mr. Blauer for all of his help and support.

On that note, we encourage you to have a wonderful day and continue to be splendiferous!

“Why is it that some secrets can drown you while some pull you close to others in a way you never want to lose?” ― ﻿Libba Bray﻿